Opera Now NEXT ISSUE MAY 2017

Welcome

This year’s celebrations for Monteverdi’s 450th birthday

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ARTIST OF THE MONTH NICHOLAS CHALMERS

The young British conductor Nicholas Chalmers is establishing a formidable reputation in the opera world as a champion of emerging talent and a passionate advocate for the future of the art form. His latest venture at Nevill Holt promises to add to his growing hit-rate of operatic success stories. Interview by Robert Thicknesse

V&A TO MOUNT MAJOR OPERA EXHIBITION

London’s Victoria and Albert Museum has announced that

ABANDONED LISZT OPERA RECEIVES PREMIERE

An excerpt from an opera that Franz Liszt began in

OBITUARY

German bass Kurt Moll has died aged 78. One of the

LETTER FROM QUEBEC

Although the Festival d’Opéra de Québec is entering

TRUE ORIGINAL

Being authentic isn’t always easy, says Christophe Rousset, as he describes the tension between historical fidelity and the need to evolve and embrace chance as a musician. Andrew Mellor meets the harpsichordistconductor as he celebrates a quarter century at the forefront of the Early Music scene with his ensemble, Les Talens Lyriques.

RENAISSANCE MAN

Celebrating Monteverdi’s 450th birthday anniversary this year, John Eliot Gardiner revisits a composer who has been a lifelong inspiration as a fellow musical pioneer. Ash Khandekar meets the conductor as he embarks on an extraordinary musical and intellectual odyssey back to the 1600s, touring Monteverdi’s three surviving operas around the world.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS

Garsington Opera’s new staging of Debussy’s Pelléas et Mélisande features two charismatic young singers, both making their festival debuts this summer. Baritone Jonathan McGovern and soprano Andrea Carroll tell Andrew Green about the challenges of preparing for their complex, elusive title roles.

Red Letter Days

Rare, unusual operas, stunning historic settings, rural idylls and memorable journeys that take you off the beaten track: Opera Now’s team of correspondents bring you some opera festival highlights to fill your 2017 diary…

LEGENDARY SINGERS

Nicolai Gedda (1925-2017) was possessed of a honeyed tenor voice, known for its elegance and versatility across a wide range of styles and languages. A handsome figure on stage, he exuded an easy bonhomie and showed a generosity of spirit towards even the most difficult colleagues, winning the love and admiration of a legion of fans over the course of a 40-year career.

Life with my Voice SCOTT HENDRICKS

With his eclectic musical tastes and a wide operatic repertoire, American baritone Scott Hendricks is a singer who resists being pigeonholed. You’ll often see him playing one of the mean, moody bad boys of opera, but this affable artist is just as convincing portraying characters with moral scruples – as he is doing at London’s Royal Opera House this month.

ART SONGS

Inspired by some of the most influential writers and artists of his day, Sir Arthur Sullivan wrote songs that display real musical individuality, adding a more imaginative dimension to the easy pastiche of his light operas. Pianist David Owen Norris introduces his new recording of Sullivan songs, featuring a trio of talented young British singers.

TRAVELS WITH MY OPERA GLASSES

Professor Anthony Ogus rediscovers his ancestral heritage while on a visit to Lithuania, where decades of Soviet occupation and the radical changes that came in its aftermath have left an indelible mark, alongside a rich cultural legacy arising from the nation’s strategic importance in the history of Europe and the Baltics

WORD COUNT

Librettists don’t have too much need for a collective

Dead Man Walking Heggie

One would have thought that Jake Heggie’s Dead Man Walking, which has been staged dozens of times, would offer more originality and nuance in its musical score. If the main purpose of opera is to express in the music what words can’t, then the focus on text in Dead Man Walking leaves a musical void at its most explosive moments

Riders of the Purple Sage Bohmler

An exciting new trend has begun among America’s smaller regional companies, who are busily commissioning and staging world premieres. Many use smaller venues to mitigate financial risk, but Arizona Opera mounted its first world premiere since the company’s inception in 1972 as a main stage production

The Winter’s Tale Wigglesworth

Can a company on an apparent slide to irrelevance afford such fingers-crossed programming as a new opera by a composer with little previous form? And then hire a rookie director on top? Answers on a postcard

English Touring Opera

English Touring Opera is a good barometer for the state

Le Vin herbé Martin

Frank Martin never intended his intimate, 1941 ‘oratorio profane’, Le Vin herbé, to be staged – and it rarely is. Yet in director Polly Graham’s revelatory new production for Welsh National Opera, the work proves powerfully convincing as music drama, albeit of a nature far removed from any Wagnerian notion of the term

Pelléas et Mélisande Debussy

David McVicar’s exquisite and absorbing new production not only embraces the themes of Pelléas et Mélisande, it powerfully amplifies them, both visually and through perfectly pitched theatrical nuance. A decent Scottish version of this opera has been lacking since the 1960s. This one redresses, no question

Round-up UK

What kind of opera strikes the iciest fear into the

Tannhäuser Wagner

In the intimate setting of Monte-Carlo’s Salle Garnier, the audience’s engagement with this new production of Tannhäuser was enhanced by the first outing in modern times of the 1861 French version of the text. Wagner’s scrummage with the Parisians is well known, but to hear this work sung in French is revealing

La Cenerentola Rossini

One of the winter’s intriguing fixtures was this match between ultra-serious Norwegian director Stefan Herheim and Italian prankster Gioachino Rossini. Would Herheim’s sophisticated technique prove too much for the quicksilver lad from Pesaro and his dashed-off schedule-filler?

A graceful art

To commemorate the 80th birthday of the American diva Grace Bumbry in January, Deutsche Grammophon reissued hard-to-find recordings and greatest hits. Benjamin Ivry assesses the singer’s varied career from its beginnings in the 1950s to her prime as a star of the opera stage and a notable interpreter of lieder

NEW RELEASES CDs, DVDs & Blu-ray

‘Come, boys, let’s all be gay, boys!’ warbles the happy

BOOKS

Published in German: Frida Leider: Sängerin im Zwiespalt

OPERA PHILADELPHIA

When Hallam’s London Company of Comedians staged Flora

SPOTLIGHT

GUIDE TO NEW PRODUCTIONS & OPERA HIGHLIGHTS APR-JUN 2017

OPERA ON SCREEN

Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin with Anna Netrebko, Elena

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* celebrity interviews, behind-the-scenes features

EPILOGUE

1. Handel opera provides a German C-Sharp and party